Ashnod wrote:

Re: Let's Play! Utena for the Sega Saturn!

OnlyInThisLight wrote:

Ashnod wrote:

Let's be honest. we want to see all the endings.

Epic truth.

No one here will ever disagree with that statement.

However...Dalbun seems to be right about how this voting system might not work. Given the variety of endings, it'll be hard for a clear winner to emerge. Maybe we should restart the "election" (lol who needs presidential elections when you have Utena ones), with all the voters picking their top three choices like earlier in the game? Maybe we could have everyone list the order they want to play the endings, and assign point values to each placement on the list?

Or maybe we should just keep it simple and leave voting the way it is and hold a run-off?

Last edited by Nights1stStar (01-22-2010 01:17:33 PM)

"To copulate is to enter another...and the artist never emerges from herself."-Charles Bauldelaire

Re: Let's Play! Utena for the Sega Saturn!

As a politics nerd who likes third parties, I vote for instant runoff voting! Each of us ranks the endings in our order of preference. The ending that gets the fewest first-place votes is eliminated, and those "ballots" are immediately redistributed to those voters' second choices. Repeat until only two choices are left, and whichever has more votes is the winner. IRV is how to make the most people the most happy in the shortest time.

It's also very labor-intensive for voters, though And any means of deciding who we're going after in advance will rob the game of some of its spontaneity. I say no voting until the first meaningful option.

Re: Let's Play! Utena for the Sega Saturn!

That would be a very good idea, satyr, but there are more endings to the game than just the Seitokai and Utena and then Anthy (which we can't get until we get every other ending, so Anthy fans are SOL unless Dallbun wants to get every ending on D-ko's file). There's Akio's ending (which is what we got the first playthrough), there's Mikage's ending, the "perfect" ending and then Game Over (which is Chigusa's ending).

Hell, get every ending possible and you get Nanami's badge for putting in 120% effort.

That's another part of the game that nobody's mentioned yet, and one I'm curious to see since it shows the fruits of our efforts. Each ending, once unlocked, earns you a character badge. Even a straight up game over will earn you a badge. And badges mean unlocked content when not playing because each badge has data about a character. Which means that while they're not options, Wakaba and Nanami are possible rewards for completing the game fully. What's best of all is that if memory serves me right, the unlocked badge info is kept separate from the game saves, and instead stored globally. I know of a couple games where their unlockable content is stored globally on the battery RAM instead of directly to a saved game file.

I don't think I'm revealing any of the direct game mechanics by speaking of the badge system (they're just achievements, kinda like in Brawl or something), but if I am I'll gladly edit this post to something less spoilery. All somebody (preferably Dallbun) has to do is let me know.

Roses have thorns to stop those who would dare deny their right to live.Razara's Postulate: For every lover of lesbians out there, there is an equal and opposite attraction to Dippin' Dots.

Re: Let's Play! Utena for the Sega Saturn!

Ashnod wrote:

Let's be honest. we want to see all the endings.

It's a possibility, because honestly this translation isn't all that hard or time-consuming... at least, at the very unprofessional level I've been doing it. Still, I don't want to commit to it or anything. For now, it's probably still wise to vote for the ending you want to see the most.

BioKraze wrote:

("badge" stuff)

Don't worry, that's not a spoiler at all. (And remember, we're okay now on giving gameplay spoilers, just not plot ones.)

The "badge" you're talking about is Akio's character profile in our "student handbook," which I mentioned at the end of the the playthrough. It's pretty dull stuff. The most interesting thing about it is the associated answering machine message, which I already posted. Still, if you want a screenshot, here it is.

(Name, birthday, blood type, star sign. Go read Giovanna's Akio shrine for commentary.)Ohtori Academy's acting chairman. Actually, he's Himemiya Anthy's older brother, and also 'The Ends of the World,' the one who directs Utena and the others' dueling game from the shadows. His special talent is doing acrobatics atop his speeding red sports car.

satyreyes wrote:

I say no voting until the first meaningful option.

Unfortunately, the game doesn't really work like that, because it mostly just tracks points instead of branching.

Honestly, I'm still not clear on how we can maintain voting on choices if we're going to choose an ending to pursue... for the most part, choices would become "do the ideal thing? yes/no." If we're going to do a character ending (which seems like a good idea, because they'll all complete the main plot at the same time), the main choices are only "who do we pursue?" and "who do we let hit 0%?" Still, I guess there is some room in there as to how we want to go about accumulating our points, so we'll give it a shot.

Anyway, since voting is proceeding, we might have to pass on using any fancy voting systems that actually make sense. I'll just do a runoff once we see who the main contenders are.

Just as a reminder, the endings are

UtenaTougaSaionjiJuriMikiNormal (which is like a character ending minus)Perfect (which will probably focus a little more on Chigusa stuff)Mikage (which won't resolve the main plot)Akio (which we did already)"Chigusa," or "Game Over" (which really won't resolve the main plot)Anthy (which won't resolve the main plot, and would be a real pain for me. Actually, never mind, no Anthy. It would take me like twelve hours of game playing to unlock. )

Re: Let's Play! Utena for the Sega Saturn!

Dallbun wrote:

Ohtori Academy's acting chairman. Actually, he's Himemiya Anthy's older brother, and also 'The Ends of the World,' the one who directs Utena and the others' dueling game. His special talent is doing acrobatics atop his speeding red sports car.

I have a huge shrine devoted to explaining a character summed up better in those three sentences. How embarrassing.

I still say Touga or Saionji. They are the most amusing answers, Utena and Juri's all seemed kinda...well like you're trying to be Utena. And Miki...well...does anyone really care about Miki?

Akio, you have nice turns of phrase, but your points aren't clear and you have no textual support. I can't give this a passing grade. ~ Professor Arisa Konno, Eng 1001 (Freshman Literature and Composition)

Re: Let's Play! Utena for the Sega Saturn!

I haven't voted so far because I don't really mind who we pick, I'm just interested in seeing more! I'm also not sure how we can maintain voting on each game decision if we've already set a course for a particular ending.

Here's what I've been thinking about, though.

We already saw a lot of Juri the first time through, so picking her course would end up with a lot of repetition.

We saw almost nothing of Miki, but part of that is him being the least interesting pick for most people. As great as Kozue is, a Miki arc is still going to concentrate on him more than his sister.

Saionji started to show up a lot in our votes, so there's some repetition there but not as much as Juri.

We only saw a bit more of Touga than we did of Miki, and he tends to be amusing in his interactions at least. (I'm certainly more biased towards him.)

A Mikage ending is probably going to be very similar to the Akio ending, abrupt and unsatisfying with an interesting elevator scene where the answers we pick will get ignored.

The Perfect ending is still ideal to me, except it would take a lot more effort to get and if we weren't careful we could mess that up. Perhaps it's too risky to go for, even if many people were interested in it, which doesn't look to be the case.

And the Normal ending sounds... normal. That's not something to shoot for.

So if I were to vote, it'd be for Touga; for no better reason than I like him.

Re: Let's Play! Utena for the Sega Saturn!

Giovanna wrote:

Dallbun wrote:

Ohtori Academy's acting chairman. Actually, he's Himemiya Anthy's older brother, and also 'The Ends of the World,' the one who directs Utena and the others' dueling game. His special talent is doing acrobatics atop his speeding red sports car.

I have a huge shrine devoted to explaining a character summed up better in those three sentences. How embarrassing.

I still say Touga or Saionji. They are the most amusing answers, Utena and Juri's all seemed kinda...well like you're trying to be Utena. And Miki...well...does anyone really care about Miki?

Given how several of the first votes were Miki ones, I'd say yes. And Juri and Utena got the highest number of points alongside Saionji...

I actually really want to see a Perfect ending, but given how the whole point of the game is to be able to fantasize about your favorite RGU character, my individual character choices have to take priority.

But lol...I feel like we're on a reverse harem fansite squealing over which boy-toy/androgynous-girl-toy we most want to turn into our love-slave next...not that it's a bad thing.

(Whoa...I never thought I'd use that above smiley in my life. Dating-sims, what have you done to me...*Curls up into the corner and sobs*)

...eh, who am I kidding? I'm not crying at all. But seriously, I never did think I'd ever use the "schlick" smiley...

Last edited by Nights1stStar (01-23-2010 07:42:40 PM)

"To copulate is to enter another...and the artist never emerges from herself."-Charles Bauldelaire

If I have you down for one character and you want to change your mind, just let me know.

If we end up doing this a third time, it will likely be the Perfect Ending, because that's what I think would benefit the fandom the most. First let's get a relatively normal playthrough out of our systems, though.

Re: Let's Play! Utena for the Sega Saturn!

Miki Miki Miki I'd probably vote for any fan service ending but blue makes a better hair color then green. Are people who didn't vote last round allowed to vote? If not feel free to invalidate my vote.I also found more screen shots of the game on this site.http://www.bladeandepsilon.com/usaturngameg.htm

Re: Let's Play! Utena for the Sega Saturn!

Hm.. considering what's getting the most love so far, I think I'll vote for a Miki ending (just can't get behind Touga right now). All this mention of his crazy sister has got me interested (and how is it that I only a few months ago put together that her english dub actor was the same as Wakaba?! Wakaba is supposed to be crazy, but not nearly that crazy)

So sign me up this round for Miki

“You taste so good,” she whispered against my skin, lingering where my neck met my shoulders. “You taste like...”“If you say eternity,” I said drily, “I’ll get out of the shower right now.”~Utena & Anthy, "Thorns Wither" fic, Chapter 4

Re: Let's Play! Utena for the Sega Saturn!

Wait...we're choosing the endings here? I enjoyed the random unpredictability of the votes. It made every update a nice surprise. I realize that a decision has already been made and I'm fine with that, but my two cents is that it's going to eliminate the excitement of playing by mapping every single little detail out. Can't we still have a little mystery?

We must go forward, not backward. Upward, not forward. And always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom.

Re: Let's Play! Utena for the Sega Saturn!

Also, while fun, the voting made the progression go a lot slower. If the aim this time around is just to get at the plot, it might get frustrating having to vote at every juncture again. I'd like more of the choices to just be assumed this time around for the sake of speediness.